SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-four ━ to understand

The shelter at the back of the building was no place to place Mia down and while it would have been efficient, he believed, to bring her with him to the infirmary to the left, Connor was rather certain treating her in a place where animals were being treated may be dehumanizing to some extent. A single glance thrown to the right presented him with an all too familiar undulating blue glow, one his memory linked back to the relaxed half of the night they spent in her childhood home. Her head was resting on him now too, although not quite as uncaring and relaxed as it had back then. Wishing only to bring her comfort, no matter how small, had made up his mind rather quicklt to go right first, into the pet store and locate, after startling the parrots to the right, the aquariums and fishtanks to the left.

It was in front of the calm swimming fish that he placed her down, back rested against the shelves filled with empty tanks for sale.

Connor aimed to be fast about returning to the infirmary and getting the supplies, but he couldn't move once he felt the strength Mia had placed in holding onto his hand. Her eyes were barely open, he noticed, but once her eyelashes fluttered a couple of times, she looked down at their hands.

"Don't leave," her lips parted to let out that beseech that threatened to be his undoing paradox. Androids, as AI and computers in general, were not constructed to understand or compute paradoxes, and should their systems be presented with such situations, instences or scenarios, they were prone to overheating.

Here was his very own paradox — he wanted to say, 'I will never leave your side again', but his lips moved and voiced, "I'll be right back," instead. And somehow, he believed, those two statements could coexist in the same plane, at the very same time.

Much as it pained him to have to pry his hand out of hers, Connor forced himself to do so. Once she's safe and her condition stable..., he ensured himself while hurrying past the cages of still barking dogs, towards the infirmary and its cabinets of supplies.

Faced with his tasks, he didn't manage to finish his thought making promises to himself, but truth was, he didn't know what he will do once he knew her safe and sound. Though he had thought about what he'll tell her once they see each other again, most of his plans had been rendered into a nothingness by the tragedy he was almost too late to prevent. His processing unit didn't dare compile for him what would have happened if he had failed his mission tonight.

The sight Mia found once she lifted her open eyes from staring at her empty hand was one that had reminded her of home. With just about enough imagination, the sight of the fish and their clear, illuminated water bubbling up small pockets of air was enough to send her back to her room, back when her best break from working on her projects was to sit up and walk to her fish, look at it go about its life at its own pace, undisturbed and unbothered.

She found it relaxing to observe the carelessness of such small creatures, the dedication and perseverance written in their habits. If anything, it reminded her that while her life may be in shambles at the moment, a breath of chaos was not a permanent state to find herself in, but a passageway. Life observed from the outside had a pattern to itself, and she too was capable of seeing it, if only she stepped back.

Mia missed the days when such thinking was sufficient to ease her mind, but for now, she was satisfied to merely finding comfort in the melancholy of reminiscing that simplicity of the past.

Connor had apparently not granted his attempt at bringing her comfort enough credit to begin with, because once he returned with all that he needed carried in his jacket that he took off, he was slightly taken off guard to to find Mia's vitals to have slightly stabilized in comparison to the fluctuating data he received from her in the club and in the car, while they drove there.